Alive and Dead
by MagnusXXN
Summary: Nothing in life is fair. And those few children raised in Neptune know this fact. But the sad truth is, few things in death are any different.


Alive and Dead.

_Along way from home. _

_She drops to the floor  
Her head's by the door  
Her bible is by her side  
Heaven is calling  
The new world is falling  
And she ain't got a single person left  
To confide  
No one to confide  
No one to confide  
Ah to confide_

Amos Lee; "Sympathize."

_"God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."_

Paul Valery.

Schrödinger's cat.

Alive and dead at the same time. He fooled God. Or maybe God just wasn't paying attention that day, who can really say? Its not the same thing as having one foot in the world and the other outside of it. To exsist at the same time...in two forms, neither living nor dead. Until you open the box and look. Pandora all over again. Well, they did say something about curiousity and a cat. But if no one opens the box...alive and dead...at the same time.

We fooled God. So why does it feel like the jokes on us?

He can feel the moonlight through wooden panels, coaxing him to rise. A faintly bluish glow, it doesn't have to fall on his ivory skin anymore for him to feel it, breath will return soon. The spark will flow across his parched tongue, down his throat. But it all feels so wrong.

"No, this is wrong."

He looks around his surroundings for a moment, taking in the clean walls minus any profane writing, floor empty of trash, its pristine.

"I mean, a boy in the girl's bathroom, its just..." Her liquid blue eyes twinkle with amusement and lust as she finishes his thought, "So wrong, its right?"

"Yes..." He breaths the word out across her lips before pulling her closer so that he can taste her lips. Her small compact frame now perched on the edge of the sink so that he could plunge his tongue into her open and waiting mouth, not that she was sitting helplessly by. Not Veronica. Even now her arms were wrapped around his torso. There was no escape.

No place either wanted to be other then here, in this moment. Oddly, he wanted to make a joke about lions laying down with lambs right now. Though, at any given time it was hard to tell who was the lion and who was the hapless snack. Years of friendship, years of bitter savagery, now a moment of peace. More then simple peace. Acceptance, maybe? Light headed bliss, hearts beating uncontrolably, tingling from finger tips to toes and in all the special places in between.

But he can't last. He needs to apologise for earlier, but more then that. There are a thousand different things he needs to say about a thousand different slights, cruelitys, malice that spewed from his lips for _years_.

She was _there_. He wanted her beside him, needed her to curse her father and demand he see reason. Needed Lilly's killer to be punished, over and done with. Needed Duncan safe and sound, happy as a foolish fat clam. But she wasn't. She stood alone. But he had the crowd. He had the school. He had the whole damned _town_. And he tore into her. Every secret, every fear, every soft spot she ever revealed to him with a easy smile and guiless innocence. He raked claws over her weak underbelly.

He'd stand behind every door she closed and grin like some savage beast as he heard her cry, could feel every tear that rolled down her baby soft skin. It wasn't enough to hear it. He needed to see it with his own eyes, waiting for _hours _just to rub more salt into her open and bleeding wounds. Like a shark, her blood sent him into a frenzy.

And he pide pipered the rest, steal her cloths and drench them in a dirty toilet, draw _whore _on every surface that would cross her path, never a moment of peace. He replaced every friendly face with a sneering visage of disgust and bile. There was nothing in the world he wanted more then to see her beaten, broken, defeated and curled up at his feet. There were at times when he was painfully erect at the very mental image of it.

How do you say your sorry for being a monster?

His heart is beating now, slow, steady. Blood is coursing through his vains. Not alive. But close enough.

_Mommy Loves You  
Mommy Loves You  
Yes I do  
Yes I do  
Mommy, Mommy, Loves You  
Mommy, Mommy, Loves You  
Yes I do  
Yes I do_

How did it come to be that he was this thing? Neither man nor beast. Just something that needs to feast. The pain of _sleeping_...that was something one simply needed to get used to. Pain is everywhere. Sometimes it seemed like his whole life was pain. Easily ignored. What was one more ack? One more pang? His body, if only faintly, was marked with the knowledge of pain. Mostn't draw blood. No bruises on the face or the arms.

_Nothing that can be seen in public._

His father was a master of pain. And he was, if reluctent, still an apt pupil.

It was the waking that tormented him. His brain, the newly awake...newly revived neutrons were bursting forward. Running on all cylindors. He couldn't keep the thoughts out. The memories. Everything was so vivid, so real. So god damned _real_.

It was the waking that tormented him.

"If you try and divorce me, I will leave you with _nothing_! No house, no maid, no _friends_..." Why did his father's eyes light up with glee at the notion? She couldn't be free of him. She could never be free. He would hound her, threaten and bully her. He would take everything away from her and do it with a smile, his lips would say 'I warned you', but his eyes would screech _suffer_.

"Right, _Dad_!" He spat the word out, it was fawl anyway. "You say another word to her and I will **kill **you." He wonders what his father saw in his son's eyes then. Did they spit murder? Did they glow with bliss at promised blood and death? His father was a _sadist_. His father was _evil_. You could see the truth of Arron Echoll from the depths of his hazel pits.

"I cannot take this anymore."

So why does every fiber of his being, every ounce of honesty in his _soul _tell him it was his own eyes that sent his mother over that bridge.

Heart beats, blood courses, lungs fill with oxygen. Not alive. But close. The numbness of his limbs is recending now like the ocean outside his window. Soon he'll be able to move, raise his arm and open his casket. Another night, just like the ones before. An endless cycle. Thats what immortality was. The same problem using the same solution night after night, some how expecting a different out come.

Wasn't that the very _definition _of insanity?

It wont be much longer now. The thirst. Its alway the last thing to return. Though, it seems to encompass so much of his nights now. He can almost taste them on his lips, fangs piercing delicate flesh, the hot rush of warm rich blood. Crimson pleasure. Then...when thats sated, when hes full and plump like a thanksgiving turkey slanted for death...there was another hungry to satisfy.

"I kept thinking that if I just stuck by you, that you'd get past this...this phase and you'd be you again."

The bitterness of this moment makes his eyes burn, then sitting beside Veronica on her ugly couch, and now lieing prown in his coffin still unable to move. Was the universe really that mean spirited? Couldn't it replay something else for just...one...night.

For his eighth birthday his mother took him to the ocean. It wasn't anything big and extravagant. Just the two of them...playing in the sand. She wore her big black hat to keep the sun out of her eyes and off her shoulders, and she'd help fill his bucket with wet sand, then turn it over and let it plop out. Four sand buckets, four posts. These were the foundation walls for their castle.

"Are you _breaking up_ with me?"

They painstakingly squared up one wall to connect to another, in the not so distance the sun was reflecting off the ocean making little rainbows around them. Like fairyland. And this was their fairy castle. It was magic, and just for the two of them.

"I can't stay with you. Not with you and your toadies cruising around at night and hatching plans, refusing to let everything get back to normal. Someones gonna get _killed_, Logan."

When they were finished with the walls his mom dug a trench around the whole thing..._'for protection'..._she said. She grabed the bucket and filled it with salt water, then deposited it in the moat.

"Somebody already has, did you forget that already? And most of the people in this town think I did it."

A fairy castle. Magic. It even had a moat. Perfect.

"Those people you call 'toadies' are my _friends_; they've got my back."

The tide's coming in, she said after a few minutes. We'd been at the beach all day. No cake or ice cream, no presents. Just the two of them, just one day, and it was magic.

"Its not about _protection_, Logan. Its about pride."

"And, the thing that I can't stand is that...I'm pretty sure there's a part of you that's having fun with all of this."

The tides coming in, honey, we've got to go. He wants to hear her voice again. Wants that day to replay in his minds eye, not forcefully through concious thought and an act of will.

_"Fun? Fun!" _

He can't remember the color of her swimsuit anymore. Can't remember if it was a bright sunny day, or over cast with clouds. It was magical. Almost. Maybe. He can't remember.

"My _mom _is dead! My _girlfriend _is dead! My _dad _is a murderer! And the only person I still care about is dumping me! You think I'm having _fun_?"

His mom tried to make him leave before it happened, but the tide came rolling in. And their sand castle was washed away. Was it his birthday? Or just a sunday? Had they been there all day, or just an afternoon? What color was his mom's swimsuit? What color were his mom's eyes?

He can't remember.

And the really sick part? Hes pretty sure there was a big part of him that was having fun.

Alive and Dead.

_An over due appointment. _

This isn't life. Its not death either. Logan Echolls isn't Schrödinger's cat. One could ask why he hasn't simply ended it all. _Real _death couldn't be any worse then this, right? But what, if anything, comes after that? Hell? He doesn't think for a second theres anything about the life hes lead that will let him enter the kingdom of heaven. And his unlife? Weren't vampires _evil_? Wasn't satan the one they prayed to now, if any of the others actually prayed.

The lid slide away easily. It wasn't heavy, and he was so **strong **now anyway.

The night through his window was beautiful. Not a cloud in sight to mare its dark cloak. And there was the moon, big, and brilliant. The center of Logan's new universe. No longer would he be blinded by the garish light of day. A child of the night. Wasn't that where he belonged now?

He can hear the waves crashing on the rocks in the distance, can count the frackles on the fisherman hundreds of feet below him walking across the beach. He even suspects he could smell the salt water for hundreds of miles. Maybe he'll test that theory. But some other night. Hes so hungry now.

Why did Veronica torment him so? He'd paid his due. Tried to take back all those hurtful, awful things he'd said and done. Tried to give her his heart on more then one occasion. And he suffered as she break it again and again. Not that he really expected anything differently. Monster, right? We get what we deserve, he suspects.

Neptune. Veronica. His mother.

Was there anything in this world but sorrow?

But he'd paid his price. When the dark man came...when it was clear that monsters weren't just people but _really _monsters...Logan had faught them. Saved her. Made sure that if they were going to take anyone...if they were going to _damn _anyway...better him then her. After all, he was going to hell anyway.

But thats gotta mean something, right? Dieing for the girl. Throwing ones self on the sword so that someone else, someone _good _doesn't have to die alone and terrified. That means something, right?

That means something.

If only he wasn't so hungry. But LA was big, tourists, prostitues, illegals, an endless buffet. Logan could gorge himself night after night on the blood of the living, taking from them what he needed to survive and no one would be the wiser. Who whould notice? Who would really care?

"If there is in this world a well attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: offical reports, affidavits of well known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires? Jean-Jacques Rousseau." He informs the empty room while watching a dim witted bird try and fly through his clear glass windows.


End file.
